In 2025 things could begin to get 'really worrisome' in housing market: Royce Mendes 

Mass immigration isn't necessary if the Canadians here could have afforded to have a family

I think the stock market will do well in 2024, so I'm thinking of putting $220,000 into stocks for my retirement. Any advice on doing this safely? Also, any important tips for the current financial situation?

Driving GDP growth through a population boom without thinking about how to house, feed, or care for the new people is the most poorly considered policy I've ever seen. It was obvious to anyone with brain cells that adding people at a record pace during a historic housing shortage would be a catastrophe. Tent cities were the inevitable outcome and it'll get worse still. Add in that per capita GDP has been in free fall, and we can say we didn't gain real economic benefits. The anchor asked if we could've predicted these hardships, and the answer is yes--it was obvious. Everyday people can figure this out. Just had a kid? You're going to want more space. You're going to need to find a pediatrician, daycare, and buy baby food. In-laws moving in? You're going to need more space and maybe renovate it. Yeah... Going to add millions of people to your country, they're going to have some needs....

Immigration is broken. Our population grew too fast and we lowered our per capita GDP.

Great video! For 2024, it’s hard to nail down specific predictions for the housing market is because it’s not yet clear how quickly or how much the Federal Reserve can bring down inflation and borrowing costs without tanking buyer demand for everything from homes to cars.

You need supporting infrastructure (schools, hospitals, teachers, doctors, etc) to grow in tandem with population growth by whatever means. The nation has failed at this so we need to pause.

Mass immigration of cheap exploitable labor absolutely and utterly has ruined this country. The insane amounts and insane pace of people coming in was not tied to housing, infrastructure, or even the economy. We've got a Housing Crisis on steroids. We've got a Healthcare and Infrastructure collapse. And we've got a stagnating economy that per capita each quarter we keep getting poorer. So along with massive competition for work the rental/ownership market also has massive competition. Which means the most affordable and basic rentals/ownership options are in high demand making them almost impossible to access or if you even get lucky to get your hands on one the affordability crisis kicks in. Canada is toast.

Maybe we have to figure out how to be more innovative and productive instead of relying cheap dollar and cheap labour

This year I tried cramming 14 people into my Toyota Corolla sedan to give them a ride home from work. It was hard, only 10 were able to squeeze in, and 4 had to walk the 35 kms home. Next year the company will bring in 14 more workers, and it is going to get 'really worrisome' in the Corolla when I try to squeeze all 28 people into my car. Now replace 14 workers and a Corolla with 1.4 million new immigrants and a limited supply of Canadian houses.

Don't agree with him. Not sure he knows well enough to priortize which one is a bigger problem to address 1st. Throttling immigration is the right move given this is an immediate emergency . We just don't have the infrastructure to service these new immigrants. Getting jobs right now is already extremely difficult.

Royce Mendez's job is to keep house prices high for Desjardins' clients and his bank's asset solvability. He is not on the side of buyers. To him and his counterparts, anything which hurts that narrative is a looming crisis.

We are in a recession. It's just a per capita recession. We are all getting poorer as we bring more people in

"You're not going to have the population growth required to fuel that upward momentum on the housing market." Saying that as if it's a bad thing. What a sick freak. Our immigration only got really out of hand over the last few years. Cost of housing has been an issue here for 15+ years. Relax. Cutting immigration from unprecedented levels is not going to decimate the housing market. The market will be just fine.

If immigrants do all the jobs , where are the Canadian born kids gone get job , what job they gone get ????. How do you expect them to pay there bills , planning to buy there own house & setteling down .

If you want cheap labour in Canada then bring manufacturing here as well and stop outsourcing... this guy is not concerned about the public at large, rather investments he is holding...he shud go and talk to people who are jobless and struggling for housing and survival..

It's ALREADY beyond worrisome as of now ! We are in clown s*it show territory. Homeless tents & tent cities are already everywhere. We're too far gone as far as housing affordability.

Canada is an un unaffordable country I’m early fifties but out of work and educated in McGill accounting and mgmt but no one hiring? Why not help those who are looking for work to get work instead

No expert is credible when the argument centers ONLY on ONE side of the economic equation. This guy is typical of that. The benefit of human resource led supply growth must be balanced with the demand induced cost increases of everything else in order to argue for a net benefit.

This guy doesn’t know that he is talking about . 1 million people in 1.5 yrs.. Insanity

Productivity is tanking, innovation is slowing, our economic growth is flat and the only way this government has addressed this issue is to increase population which then artificially increase GDP but in reality we have been left with this affordability crisis. Canada is broken and it will take decades to fix.

Our government always seems to do things without modeling what will happen in the future. I wish our policy makers could think 😢

Our birth rates would not be similar to some european countries. If our cost of living was more affordable, there was equality in the family courts and Canadians (multiple races) would have more children.

Cities are also contributing to the high price housing problem by rezoning residential lots from single older houses (1000-1500sqft). These houses are worth $500,000-$700,000 in Calgary. If these lots are rezoned to allow infill houses, now you're competing against developers to buy a house on a 50ft lot (pushing up there prices) or the infills they will build are well over a million dollars each. It's more like we're housing livestock, in feedlots, than building a livable community.

The debates we are having are wrong ….. we need people but good quality people…. We want more students in bachelors, Masters, and PhDs…. We do not want more refugees, uneducated visitors who buy work permits via LMIAs, and diploma students.

Avoided a recession….ON PAPER. Real people have seen such an increase in financial stress these past few years, what’s the point of “growth” if it doesn’t benefit citizens?

GOOD. We’re in dire need of a supply/demand rebalancing. The only people who benefit from the current equilibrium are the financiers who win from cheap labour and high asset prices.

stricter immigration is needed to fix housing affordability

What about access to services and out of control crime?

Considering that the actual definition of infrastructure from the Oxford dictionary is “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise” it would seem rather strange that infrastructure expansion wasn’t sufficiently considered when pursuing a population surge through rapid immigration. Seems almost like an unelected citizen who doesn’t receive a salary to plan and address these issues can see what is glaringly obvious. Immigration, when combined with sufficient infrastructure expansion, could be brilliant. Could be enormously enriching and beneficial for everyone. Cramming everyone into an unplanned and insufficient housing supply seems, well, rather crude and shockingly blind.

Why call it population growth? call it as it is overwhelming influx of immigration without housing planning for them! It us to obvious that economic planning favored speculative real estate treated not as a shelter but as commodities subjected to windfall profit for hedge fund investment firm!💰

Airports, sports arenas, public transportation, roads needs huge investment to meet the growing demand. Why is it that large population growth still using the same old infrastructure built 50 yrs ago?

Traffic congestion, housing shortages, public service shortages, more pollution, foreign wars being acted out on Canadian campuses. Canada needs more population growth like I need a migraine headache.

I think it is a good idea to curtail immigration numbers until we get the million undocumented people here figured out. We did just find before the increase.

Just because people are leaving workforce they don't vanish in thin air. They still need homes and other services. How do you accommodate all new people without building infrastructure around it

Why are we unable to produce enough jobs for Canadians

Where are the new immigrants suppose to live and are we going to actually use their skillsets or are they going work low wage jobs causing multi billion dollar companies keep wages stagnated.

What is “really worrisome” for businesses, homeowners, investors, realtors, etc., should be good news for everyday people, if prices of everything drop because there will be less demand for everything. Everything is too expensive right now.

This director is speaking only on one side and viewing it in a negative side. However, once the immigration population goes down, the company will consider changing their policy to match the job hiring and increase their salary offer and catch more talents that already existing in Canada.

4 million Canadians live outside of Canada, 1 million have packed up and moved to the USA.

Speaking of curtailment, resource companies are doing exactly that to keep prices for goods artificially high

If you don’t have enough infrastructure in place don’t bring millions of low skilled sheeps here to graze the pasture has no grass to feed

No talk about building more and more non-profit market rental housing co-ops on city leased lands. This was done back in the 60's and 70's and was extremely effective at providing dignified housing to families who became members of these rental based housing co-operatives. They were well designed and as the members paid down the debt to the banks on the construction of these co-operatives their housing charges went down overtime and the maintenance and up keep of the co-ops was kept up as each member held a sense of "pride in membership" similar to home owners who hold the "pride in ownership" attitude. There will always be a certain sector of society who serve the intelligentsia and upper class of cities who need the working class services of people who live near and around them. It is idiotic to drive lower classes further and further out into the wastelands of suburban sprawl, who have to travel hours on shotty public transit to get to work and earn a living. BUILD MORE HOUSING CO-OPS IN THE URBAN CENTRES OF CANADIAN CITIES. IT IS NOT THAT COMPLICATED.

fear a housing crash due to people buying homes above asking prices with little equity. If prices drop, affordability and potential foreclosures may arise, worsened by future layoffs and rising living costs. I want to invest more than $300k, but I'm not sure on how to mitigate risk.

Hahaha blaming the housing crash on diminished population growth. What will he say when unemployment starts sky rocketing even though immigration is throttled. The housing market is over. A doubling of home prices in 2 years was the blow off top.

This guy always makes bad faith arguments and BNN love him. Desjardins suck.

Its more than worrisome now! Population growth is just putting more pressure on housing prices that most can't afford anyway!

Great points. Smart man. Humans for the most part truly have short term memory. All these news and we forget some of the problems we already had and have forecasted years ago - Aging population rapidly being replaced by cheap labor resulting in less capable workforce & more expensive healthcare. Impending mortgage rate renewals from record low rates.

Things could get "really worrisome" in 2025? It's an emergency right now, and has been for years. The historic level of immigration has been a massive contributor to this. Massive immigration isn't (and has never been) the main cure for our aging population.

People that worked for 20 years have been layoff n yet r still unemployed n are residents in canada but yet they rather allow more immigrants to come n not hire residents instead they r hiring for less the new immigrants n leaving residents unemployed but say that they don't wNt to work😮😮😮

Airport expansion, more competition in telecommunications, banking, technology, roads, all need to be built

Mr. Mendez and his organization have finally grasped the actual narrative of the market. It’s preferable to be late than to never catch up at all. Thanks

It's unfortunate that governments don't allow markets to go through normal recessionary patters like they used to during older generations' time. We've been putting multiple band aids (money printing) onto already inflated asset prices which has priced out an entire generation of first time home buyers.

The growth has been profoundly chaotic. Is this guy suggesting we should keep growing like a malignant cancer?

I wonder if Canadians know what the "Century Initiative" is, and that it is supported by Trudeau and the Liberals: "The Century Initiative (originally the Laurier Project Foundation)is a Canadian lobby group and charity that aims to increase Canada's population to 100 million by 2100. This includes increasing the population of megaregions, which are interlocking areas with more than one city centre and a typical population of 5 million or more (e.g., the Greater Toronto Area, Greater Vancouver, and the National Capital Region)."

Royce Mendes is horribly unintelligent.

The Desjardins guy seems to be over-emphasising immigration cuts. It is not as if the government (or next one) is going to complete stop immigration. That tap will be still on; how much less of a flow happens is debatable. That means demand might be less; businesses will still have labour as well as demand, just not as much as before. The commercial sector can whine about less profits but it is essential that the government focusses on affordable housing supply, health and targets labor shortages in critical areas.

Congratulations 🥳 on Building homes in Canada 🇨🇦

Business benefited and now most Canadians can't afford housing, and owning a house is out of reach

Just dont' build, easy, if I were a developer I'd invest elsewhere, ONtario is terrible .

Levered players in real estate will crash but will it be systemic remains to be seen but good chances are likely. GDP growth is scant overall and adding to the population if not in targeted areas where there is actually a shortage could be another disaster. Excess population in unneeded areas will be a drag on the eco. imo

GDP should not be the ultimate measure of prosperity. Chasing GDP at the expense of almost everything else is extremely destructive and detrimental.

Although I agree thatn immagration is a big portion of inflation. We have to remember that during COVID when immigration were at an all time low, Shelter cost have increased significantly. We thus have more than one component of this issue

At least life is affordable for the citizens in those European nations. People are working full time and living on the street here!! Do you realize that the job of the Canadian government is not to bring down wages through immigration so business can increase their profits but to increase the standard of living of Canadians!

Bloomberg, please, please stop interviewing biased people who are slinging lobbies. Are new immigrants unemployed and living in tents and hotels, or are they filling important jobs? Given the rising unemployment rate this week, CLEARLY immigrants are increasing our employment problems. Stop hiring foreign workers to do jobs young Canadians used to do - many of us worked farm jobs in the summers during university.

Absolutely rubbish we have sky high housing costs and inaccessible health care, only business benefits

These experts are best This guy just said It's helping us to avoid a recession, a recession we've been in for about 3 years at this point. We'll done

As the poet says, wealth is nothing but the absence of people.

I will vote for whatever party promises to curb immigration to a reasonable level. I believe it is the single biggest problem we have in Canada right now.

government will just allow 50+ year amortizations. politicians own homes too so they will just do whatever it takes to bail people out.

this expert guy is fake

people have used their homes as ATM machines and are now crying?? LOL Let the real estate train wreck begin

GDP growth is not what matters, what matters is GDP growth per capita which is not achieved by flooding the country with immigrants, any first year economics student knows that except this guy.

Less people emigration to Canada in 2025 but lower interest rates. Home prices will still go up forcing rents higher.

AI is already replacing lots of jobs which makes the case for massive immigration weak, no mention of that on this interview.

The real worry is that it’s bullish

The banks could be forced to only allow 4X median income - this way people arent given so much rope. Then tax the hell out of non primary residences forcing investors out and into progressive instead of regressive housing and social deteriorating housing speculation. Then cut immigration by 95%. Housing will then reflect the longer term averages of 4-6X median incomes and citizens have housing.

All these BNN interviews seem like hot air to me... a random person, with a random title, saying random things.. could be right, could be wrong... I can't tell

Dude…. Which means interest rate will go down if your argument holds.

Canada population is increasing by 1.3 million per year Canada is building houses 50,000 per year It's not about population. It's about building more houses or more condos or more apartments affordably

Canada needs a Workplace Culture Change in Order to Retain Talented Immigrants. Discrimination needs to be eliminated and Productivity needs to be allowed.

Of course everything is different after a year or so . I do not need you to tell me.

This guy probably owns property and rents it out to those exact same people he says the country needs.

The amount of immigration to canada will prop up real estate till 2030

I think 100,000 is sufficient for immigration a year if we relocate the 1.9 million Palestinians then thats our immigration and refugee /asylum quota for 20 years

What he says make sense. It's like if more eggs then chickens not needed but if chickens are removed then eggs reduced by multifold. The ratio is not same. Basic issue is Canada is not digitized supply chain to banking still feel so outdated. Nothing moves quickly except amazon delivery. Fix food supply problems, increase domestic manufacturing, reduce refugees they don't contribute anything to economy and Canada planning for 1 million afgans and 1 million Ukrainians how that will change population demographics?? What's the hell they are trying to do. They can support them by giving temporary visa till war is over and let all naturalise through a proper PR pathway.

Not true, you need to do his research properly

I think you mean “so many people that can work, for next to nothing.”

Pop!

Temporary workers are not the ones out bidding me on a home. We need major house building, and a lack of workers isn't going to help Trudeau

If housing is treated as a shelter for family then it is not supposed to be profitable! What a douche!

Its called decimating the existing culture.

Labour crime pool.

Immigration is still too high even with these measures

Too many students.

Wrong Royce, illegal immigration did not fuel the growth (bubble) you speak of. Money rinting did it. Think about it. What are these people who are coming eith nothing, spending? Printed money.

I love how he’s framing that population growth is both one of the main problems, but also the solution to paper over our other problems. Classic right-wing econ pundit nonsense where you don’t actually get to any root cause of any problem, and you just talk about things that get people fearful and angry and then end the conversation with “that’s all we have time for.”

Too many immigrants we cannot accommodate. Look at the housings, schools, etc.

Castro Jr. see them as votes, what happens after is not relevant...

This is crap. GDP is flat. More people no growth.

whyt do we always have to import? why not breed new canadians? and tell third worlds to stop spawning